Editorial: Exercising some caution after latest health study

Photo by Michael S. Gordon / The RepublicanMountain View Elementary School students Maeg L. Diefenderfer, left, and Serenity A. Martin, right, both 11, show their exercising skills last year in the school gym while school nurse Susan M. Thomas and physical education teacher Michelle R. Bongiovanni, left and right behind them, look on. A recently released study says while exercise is good for most people, some kinds may not be good for others.

No, we’re not thinking here of the couch potato set, those chip-chomping layabouts whose idea of exercise is lumbering off to the fridge for another cold one.

The folks we’ve got in mind instead are otherwise healthy people who may actually not benefit from exercise, but might find that exertion renders them less healthy.

There’s all of an unexpected sudden been a chink in the exercise armor, as a recent study found that for some, apparently, exercise can actually have negative health effects.

The study – rigorous, analyzed, re-evaluated – has left the experts scratching their heads. While exercise lowers cholesterol and increases heart health for most people, there are some in a statistically significant group who have exactly the opposite happen.

They go to the gym or head out on their bicycle or for a run – and their cholesterol goes up. And their heart health goes south.

We’ve all of us gotten used to studies that turn the conventional wisdom upside-down. And to take them with a pinch of unhealthy salt.

Exercise is very likely to remain on the positive side of the ledger. Perhaps not for everyone, and perhaps in some modified form.

We don’t expect that running shoes and gym memberships will soon come with a warning from the surgeon general – “use of this product as intended may be beneficial – or could be detrimental – to your health, your heart” – though given the other warnings that proliferate in our ever-litigious culture, it’s certainly possible.

For now, though, a word to the wise: There were already plenty of reasons – none of them good – to avoid exercising. The new study doesn’t suddenly give them credence.